32 Comments

1. Cynical Nation:

The most consequential fallout of this election may ultimately be the demise of the MSM media. They’ll still exist, of course, but they’ll no longer be “mainstream.” They hocked the last vestiges of their credibility and perceived neutrality in a win-at-all-cost effort to elect John Kerry. It was a dear price to pay even if they’d been successful. There are simply too many alternative news sources these days for people to continue patronizing such a flagrantly biased enterprise.

Nov 12, 2004 - 6:21 am 2. Peg C.:

Roger, I agree with you, although most people I know and work with still want news to come to them. They are locked into passive acceptance and don’t think it’s their responsibility to pursue truth and the untold story. UNSCAM and oil-for-food draw a big, fat blank. Ashcroft is the devil incarnate.

I get most of my news filtered through blogs now. Why would I want to get news from an organization that immediately jumps on the MSM bandwagon of “Gonzales is the evil architect of the evil Patriot Act” as happened Wednesday? The MSM has completely discredited themselves in my eyes many times over and I no longer trust anything they tell me. ANYTHING. To say I have a jaundiced eye doesn’t begin to describe it, and I’m angry about it.

I disagree with Henninger’s conclusion that our pols need to face a debate squad before the House a la the Brits. We do not teach debating in school (much) and have no reverence for it, and my guess is the vast majority of our pols, if they had to do this, would fail abjectly. One could say this is a good thing, but it’s not our culture to put pols through this. If it is to become so, we had better give our youth the tools to do it. Furthermore, I’m not convinced that Tony Blair’s outstanding debating and verbal skills have persuaded many Brits that he is not also evil incarnate. Lastly, my guess is 99.99% of this country would fail to tune in. I hope I’m wrong about that; during our 3 presidential “debates” (which were anything but), I kept wishing W and Kerry could hammer each other directly with questions and the MSM moderators would vanish. I think a verbal free-for-all would have been much more enlightening and entertaining.

Nov 12, 2004 - 6:23 am 3. Blackshoe:

I remember well the halcyon days when I opened my New York Times in the morning and thought I was getting The News. Then I would go my merry way and enjoy (or not) my day. But I’m not sure, in retrospect, I was getting The News any more then I have been in the Rathergate era.

Sadly, it seems to have ever been so.

Nov 12, 2004 - 6:34 am 4. jedrury:

Henninger’s conclusion is fine but let’s go one better.

Let’s have Rather, Jennings, Brokaw, Krugman and Dowd defend their whacko positions on TV. Of course, they will scream “freedom of the press.” Okay, okay, I may agree; then, let’s not give them unfettered access to C Span and other cushy panels and forums to justify themselves without debate and vigorous cross examination.

So many times on C Span, you see these journalists come before panels and spout their silliness and the crowd which is intimidated by them remains passive, unquestioning and adoring.

Enough !!!!

Nov 12, 2004 - 7:15 am 5. Keith_Indy:

Heaven forbid we hold the mainstream media ACCOUNTABLE for what they spew…

I can’t wait until they start putting bloggers on debate/interview panels.

Pundit: BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH

Blogger: (after quickly finding the correct info on the net) Uh, NO you are wrong on your facts, here they are. So, since the facts don’t support your position, will you be changing your position?

Pundit: ack!!! ffttt!!!

Nov 12, 2004 - 7:35 am 6. Bob:

“A citizenry using Google (or the equivalent) to find its news, to search for the truth, elusive as that may be, is a concerned citizenry, an engaged citizenry.”

Maybe … but it is not an INFORMED citizenry. Just as you can’t believe what you read in the NYT or the LAT, just as you can’t believe what you see on NBC or Fox — you can’t believe what you read in blogs and you can’t believe what people tell you. Everyone is biased; everyone spins; everyone lies.

Believe it or not.

Nov 12, 2004 - 7:40 am 7. Knucklehead:

The MSM is not defeated. Like the terrorists and lunatic fringe they are a part of there are reeling and bloodied and find their “enemy” is swarming them and has developed a battle tempo that is within their decision cycle, but they will continue to fight tenaciously.

NPR, IMHO, needs to become a target of focus. There are no end of people who get all the news and opinion they are willing to listen to from NPR.

Nov 12, 2004 - 7:42 am 8. PeterArgus:

Roger:

You end up having to Google every subject in the news (Guantanamo, gay marriage

statutes, Tora Bora, the Patriot Act) to find out what’s been left out or buried

at the bottom.

Speaking of which, the NYT published today an article refuting blog-generated

conspiracies on vote fraud, Vote

Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried . "Buried at the

bottom" is the most telling paragraph:

“I’d give my right arm for Internet rumors of a stolen election to be true,”

said David Wade, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, “but blogging it doesn’t

make it so. We can change the future; we can’t rewrite the past.”

Cogitate on this one. Perhaps most sane-thinking people would think the absolute

worse thing that could happen to a democracy is to have the voting process de-legitimized

no matter who gets the majority of votes. We can all live with a disappointing

outcome if the voting process is fair and square. It would be devastating if

the election was a fraud – probably the beginning of the end of democracy as

we know it. But Mr. Wade, described by the NYT in a previous article as the

"loyal and long-suffering press secretary" of Mr. Kerry – so he has

been around the block – wishes this monstrosity on us?!? This isn’t Daily Kos

saying this, this is Kerry’s right hand man (oh couldn’t resist). If there are

any Democrats out there still listening, still thinking, save your party, please

save your party from this madness.

Nov 12, 2004 - 7:51 am 9. Hogarth:

I never did it, but I thought about writing a blog article on the proposed public broadband policies of Philadelphia and Seattle. These policies would provide publicly accessible wireless access points across the entire city.

I thought this to be a great idea in that it would relieve many, many people from the shackles of the network news and allow them to become far more educated voters.

Probably just get used to faster porn, though, so I never wrote the article.

Nov 12, 2004 - 7:53 am 10. jedrury:

Keith:

Spot on !

The way the MSM attacks is to set a boggie man and then shoot it. “Voter fraud” blogs are not something I’ve seen on this website or other credible websites.

What better way to discredit the bloggers but to shoot down that silly allegation and thereby discredit the whole blogging phenom. And who better to provide a choice quote but a Kerry press secretary.

Nov 12, 2004 - 8:17 am 11. thibaud:

Henninger has a point. The problem here is the disconnect between two information sources: the MSM, while ubiquitous and readily available 24/7, is not trustworthy. OTOH the diverse blogosphere/googlesphere, while more trustworthy because of that very diversity, is not always available, either in its scope or its timeliness.

For example, at its current state of evolution I can’t rely on my trusted blogger network to tell me what’s going on with the dollar, or events in Russia, or Henry Kissinger’s latest pronouncement, or the Chinese economy. Neither will Google bring me to reliable and credible sites on the above. Google “Henry Kissinger” or “Putin” and you’ll get a thousand paranoiac screed sites. As regards politically-charged news and info, Google = noise.

The next phase here is for the blogosphere to attain the next level and actually start to aggregate, and source and develop, news stories. In other words, become not merely a gadfly or factchecker but a true rival to the MSM.

Nov 12, 2004 - 8:21 am 12. Knucklehead:

PeterArgus,

Your point re: the statement by David Wade is well taken but I’d also like to point out that Wade’s statement is overloaded and also carries with it the interpretation that the Democratic Party, at the level of the press secretary for it’s most recent candidate for president, wishes that its most lunatic fringe conspiracy theories were correct rather than idiotic moonbatteries. People that stupid and demented cannot be allowed to “change the future” – they have done more than enough damage already.

Nov 12, 2004 - 8:22 am 13. Brian:

The problem in the media is an agency effect. That’s when you hire someone (an agent) to look after your interests and they wind up looking after their own interests instead.

The media’s job as our agent is to dig through the raw data and bring us the choice bits. But they’ve used the trust we give them to further their personal advocacy goals. Only now that the internet has shone the light on them do we find out what they’ve been up to all this time.

Their abdication leaves we the readers in the lurch. Though the quality of information we get through blogs is higher, the cost of acquiring it has skyrocketed. How many manhours are being wasted in googling and factchecking every last little thing? And how much of that is redundant effort?

Efficiency demands a system that delivers the news quickly and without the buncombe. There’s a market for it; I think most of us want to get back to spending time on what’s important to us, rather than spending hours each day making up for the media’s shortcomings.

Blogs are good, but not yet perfect. We need a news delivery system that reacts to feedback. How about a news wiki?

Nov 12, 2004 - 8:41 am 14. Hogarth:

Brian -

Yes, but I don’t care about knowing the 100% unadulterated facts about every last thing. Now that the blinders are off, I use the established media only as a first filter. I then use blogs that I know more or less share my view of what is and what is not important to delve further into. Thus, I trust Glenn Reynolds and Roger Simon to do the secondary filtering for me. Now and then I’ll come across a topic that I personally want to dive into and circle back to as much ‘raw’ source as I can find, or discuss with others via the comments sections.

It’s been working pretty well for me, and I see this hybrid approach as my primary news gathering model moving forward. I’m not yet ready to count on Roger, Glenn, et. al. as my sole news sources, but someday… maybe.

Nov 12, 2004 - 9:10 am 15. Samuel:

Roger

This is why I read both the WAPO and WATIMES, which I have said are the best and most fair at representing their respective political slants. The realities are simple, people usually seek to justify and promote their own prejudices anyway. I’m sure like myself, after 9/11 some of your own prejudices have just shifted to cynicism towards leftist publications and viewpoints along with a “guarded” openness to conservative publications. I say “guarded” because I am not going to accept things with the same old ease as I did leftist ones, prejudice owes it’s allegiance to no political persuasion, only to those with strong beliefs and a blind loyalty. I used to feel certain prejudices where worse than others, I now realize the importance to view all prejudices as equally dangerous if taken to levels that drive out truth and sound reason.

When reporter/media personality, Carol Simpson says something akin to, “I look at the electoral map and I see the same States that practiced Slavery and stood against Civil Rights likewise asserting itself politically today.” I say talk on, please express yourself and give us a context in which to judge your words. Carol, first of all, Jim Crow was a damn Democrat, second of all, as my own “Yellow Dog Democrat” father has often asked, “If Republicans are the problem then why has the South become more tamed the more Republican it has become?” My father is from Atlanta, looking back at it, how a man that lived in Georgia and Virginia through the Jim Crow days still vote Democrat is beyond me, another subject for another day. When I hear people say, “If Walter Cronkite had been behind the anchor desk at CBS, we would be out of Iraq by now and probably would never have gone in with.” I just say thank God this is 2004 and not 1974.

—-

Roger, on another very interesting note concerning the Jewish vote? I just returned from a business/trade gathering and did some homework for you. I talked to 38 fellow Jews, mostly from Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York. (in other words Northeast Establishment Jews) and all were willing to answer my questions about their vote. The following is who they voted for in 2000 and 2004. Amazing, here it is…

2000)

Bush 6

Gore 30

Nader 2

2004)

Bush 18

Kerry 19

Nader 1

—-

Whoa! All but 3 were somewhat discreet about it and did not “chest beat” in public about it (2 were more enthusiastic then I). I think your “secret source” is not only right, but from the above I actually believe the shift was even stronger in some of the “I-95 Terror Corridor”. Now this group was decidedly male and businessmen, but I think if we ever truly dig to the bottom we will find a very big shift in support of historical proportions. I believe Bush indeed lost much support among fiscal libertarians, paleo conservatives, and others, but he more than made up such losses with “War On Terror Neo-cons” and “Big Government Social Conservatives”. Roger I am truly take aback by the numbers, amazing. I take great heart from this.

Nov 12, 2004 - 9:19 am 16. Samuel:

Roger, as a follow up to my above numbers, I will do further “investigating” when I can in my own community and get back to you.

Nov 12, 2004 - 9:24 am 17. ambisinistral:

The real winners here are the politicians. Pig heaven for them. If much of the public (a margin large enough to decide elections) believes it no longer has access to a settled information baseline, an agreed-upon set of facts, then it’s so much easier for the pols, using this new arsenal of high-tech info firepower, to manipulate a doubtful public and push it around with propaganda (they can demographically target ads to the TV screens in health clubs).

The above quoted paragraph demonstrates the failure of Henninger’s arguement. Parsed carefully, it drips of elitism.

The whole problem has been that one group of people — the MSM — has controlled the “agreed-upon set of facts”. Cable news, talk radio and the internet have by removing the gatekeepers of information diversified and enriched the debate. How is that a bad thing?

I would argue that one stream of information, one “agreed-upon set of facts”, is much easier to be manipulated. In fact, such manipulation is exactly what Henninger is decrying in this article.

The unwashed masses checking facts and forming their own opinions is democracy. A columnist wringing his hands over folks having to use Google to check facts is at pretty comical example of just how much the media, both left and right, does want to spoon feed us dolts.

Nov 12, 2004 - 9:37 am 18. Vulgorilla:

“You end up having to Google every subject in the news (Guantanamo, gay marriage statutes, Tora Bora, the Patriot Act) to find out what’s been left out or buried at the bottom.”

It’s really even worse than that. It used to be like Roger’s quote, above, but now that’s just the last thing one does. The first thing is to figure out what has been intentionally fabricated and fed to us as “news”. A good example is one of Bush’s campaign speeches where upon learning that Bill Clinton is in the hospital awaiting bypass surgery, say to his audience that he wishes Mr. Clinton a good outcome and a speedy recovery. The crowd cheered the comment by Bush, but the AP reported it as “The crowd Boo’d Bush’s comments”, which we all know from listening to a recording of the speech, and the crowd’s reaction, was an outright lie.

Given this example, Rathergate, and many, many others, I no longer listen to the MSM in any of its many forms, electronic or print. My assumption now is that if it came from the MSM, it’s obviously a fabrication, a lie, and concocted for political points.

I’ve had this conversation with friends and associates, with the bottom line being that we’d all pay a goodly sum of money to have access to a reliable news outlet that we didn’t have to constantly fact check. All we want is the news, reported without bias, and we’re willing to pay for it. For right now, it’s the blogosphere with heavy reliance on Google, but it beats the hell outta the MSM. At least with the MSM you know right up front that its mostly lies. A very sad state of affairs.

Nov 12, 2004 - 9:39 am 19. WichitaGirl:

Hey Roger,

While it’s true that the people who are taking the time to follow up all the google links on an issue are “engaged”, often what they are engaged in is finding links to back up their pre-established points of view. And this election has taught me that whatever one wants to believe, links can be found to back it up.

People like myself (who really hate making up their minds until all the evidence is in) are simply stymied, dead in the water. Agreed, we were all living in a nice fantasy that real “news”, i.e. Truth, was out there to be had; but the internet age has just convinced me that I’m living in Rashomon. I don’t feel empowered; I feel disillusioned.

Nov 12, 2004 - 9:41 am 20. Keith_Indy:

You know what’s really interesting to me about this “alternate news” phenomenon, and people finally waking up to media bias…

Conservatives have known this for years. And dealt with it by seeking multiple sources for most news stories. And this was before blogs, the internet, or FoxNews.

I remember way back when (10 years ago or so) when I first started becoming seriously involved with politics. This would have been around the time the assualt weapons ban was being discussed. The amount of disinformation the mainstream media was pushing turned my stomach, and taught me not to trust any story having politics in it.

Glad you all are waking up.

Any more I go straight to the source if an article has a quote from a politician. It’s far easier to find a transcript, read the context, and then decide what they were talking about, then to “buy into” the couple of sentances pulled out of context and then wrapped with the writers prejudice and spin.

That’s why anyone who actually read what the President was saying about Iraq, knew he never said Iraq was an imminent threat. It really is appalling when the President makes a speech, doesn’t utter the word imminent threat in the speech, and the headline the next day is “President calls Iraq Imminent Threat.”

Nov 12, 2004 - 10:12 am 21. Keith_Indy:

Have faith WichitaGirl, recognizing the problem is the first step to correcting it…

Nov 12, 2004 - 10:13 am 22. Barrett:

The first issue I have with the MSM is that they (i) try to frame what the issues of the day will be and (ii) try to dictate what the are the relevant facts to be used in the debate. If you control (i) and (ii), you control the outcome of the debate. This is by itself elitist.

The problem the MSM now faces is access to information, which means both (i) and (ii) can be challenged. Most journalists are generalists. Combine that with an editorial position and you get the NYT.

There are many experts in every field who now have access to information and the ability to distribute their knowledge and analysis of news events via the Internet. As Roger noted, an engaged citizenry is a benefit to informing all of us.

The process of vetting new stories and facts in a free, open environment should ultimately yield the truth. Bias will be revealed. The process may be a bit messy, but it works.

I no longer just read the newspaper. There is too much wisdom and knowledge in places like this.

Nov 12, 2004 - 11:12 am 23. Cynic:

“Daniel Henninger’s oped in today’s WSJ bemoaning the decline (through bias) of Big Media ”

should have thought of the consequences of Raines behaviour

http://www.nationalreview.com/impromptus/impromptus200411120827.asp

“It’s good that Raines is away from the Times and able to speak his mind, in this unrestrained way ó because we see what kind of man inhabits the Times, and is chosen to lead it. Howell Raines, Maureen Dowd ó they are that paper’s ethos, its Geist.”

And then to treat us to the garbage of Carter

“Vote For Peace” ex President Jimmy Carter’s obituary for Yasser Arafat is riddled with gross distortions and untruths. It is a testament to the lack of editorial control that such a sloppy piece of garbage made it to the op-ed page of an elite American newspaper.”

http://soccerdad.baltiblogs.com/

and Judith Miller’s obituary

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41416

“In a tribute to the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, the New York Times yesterday featured a glowing obituary that blames Israel for Palestinian terrorism, ignores major violent incidents, contradicts historical accounts of certain events, whitewashes viscious propaganda on Palestinian TV, and hails Arafat as a “statesman” and the only Palestinian leader who could make “painful compromises for peace.”

In the 5,265 word obituary by writer Judith Miller, readers are introduced to Arafat only as “the wily and enigmatic father …”

When they continue to twist and distort facts, withhold pertinent facts and generally treat the reader with contempt what do they expect from those who are ableto think?

Nov 12, 2004 - 11:23 am 24. Morgan:

The real sticking point is the availability of raw, unbiased information. Through google we can get all the publicly reported versions of events (which helps, sometimes, to impute a bias-removed version), and through the blogs we can get competing analysis/interpretation of the events, but ultimately we need to have raw information collected and distributed without bias.

When CBS put the TANG memos on the Web, we got raw information. When the tape of Bush’s supposed boobirds was released, we got raw information. But we need the raw information before expertise can be applied to its analysis.

Ideally, when a “newsworthy” event is planned and can be taped, someone should tape it, release it, and allow us to decide which reporters we trust based on the accuracy of their accounts. When the event is not planned or is covered secondhand through eyewitnesses or documents, make full disclosure the rule – how did you find the witnesses/documents, what do we know about their background/provenance, what did you ask the witness, what were the full answers he gave? And let’s see those documents. Give us the complete version and your summary – let us decide whether we trust you enough to want just the summary next time.

With the raw information, we can evaluate the analysts, too. When Little Green Footballs came out with their analysis of the TANG memos, I could check their version of the memo against CBS’s – and LGF specified the font, font size etc. used to recreate the document.

Then we can leverage the nature of the internet to keep a check on the reporters and analysts. I might just read the summary 99% of the time, but if everyone evaluates it against the full-disclosure version that other 1% of the time then every report will be fact-checked thousands of times. If I have a problem with the way it was reported, I can say so, publicly, and other people will be more likely to check it out, too.

But it all starts with access to the information.

Nov 12, 2004 - 12:18 pm 25. someone:

I get most of my news from Rantburg. I agree with the previous commenter that more primary data being online would improve things, but there’s a lot of stuff out there already.

Nov 12, 2004 - 12:47 pm 26. Sandy P:

via polipundit:

60,366,497

No, not Vincent DíOnofrioís psychotherapy tab.

Thatís the total number of ballots, as of todayís date, that were cast in favor of President re-elect George W. Bush.

—-

Kerry’s still at 56.9M

Nov 12, 2004 - 2:36 pm 27. TmjUtah:

ambisinistral -

“The above quoted paragraph demonstrates the failure of Henninger’s arguement. Parsed carefully, it drips of elitism.”

Yes, and amen, but even more damning is Henninger’s blindness to the recent attempts and spectacular failures to execute exactly the kind of tactic he suggests.

Rathergate was ten pounds of BS in a two pound bag and it was almost certainly a coordinated program between the Kerry campaign and CBS. Only slightly less insulting to the intelligence of the average doorstop was the Al Qaqaa allegation in the closing week of the race. The only reason that effort got launched at all was the media assumed that the administration had so often routinely ignored media mischaracterizations of battlefield reporting in the past the perpatrators just assumed that Bush wounldn’t step up to bat on this one.

Having Christianne Amanopour or the NY Times editorial board selling quagmire is old hat; specific charges of dereliction are not. As soon as the numbers were put in perspective and the gaps in the timeline became apparent, the publication of the ratline (U.N (al Baredi (sp)- CBS-NY Times) became nothing more than icing on the cake.

Al Qaqaa only made it to press because there wasn’t anything left for Kerry to campaign on, anyway. That’s the saddest indicator of a lack of substance in just about any campaign I can remember. In the end they had NOTHING to convince voters to vote for them. It was always an ABB strategy. Eighteen damned months of it.

Now Henninger might be given a little grace if we accept his position that red herrings and poisoned wells might be generated solely by politicians in the future…but in the interest of honesty, how come the issue of decades of seamless agitprop support by media for Democrat candidates wasn’t mentioned?

BTW – I’m still waiting to read the results of the Rathergate Report. I wonder if it’s stuck in the pipeline with Sandy Berger’s Excellent Pants Adventure?

Nov 12, 2004 - 5:15 pm 28. richard mcenroe:

But, but Matt Drudge says I SHOULD trust everything I read on the internet… he said so right before he read out the Florida exit polls…

Nov 12, 2004 - 5:18 pm 29. Matteo:

I suspect that at least some degree of MSM bias is caused by the finite nature of the medium used to deliver information itself. A newspaper can only be so bulky. A newscast is 22 minutes. Since everything must be pared down to fit, we have a huge opportunity for bias to be injected, simply in terms of what gets shown, and what ends up on the cutting room floor. We’ve all either directly experienced, or heard secondhand stories from people who have been interviewed for 20 minutes, only to have the blandest, least consequential 3 second soundbite end up on the news. Or to have some snippet taken completely out of context.

With the advent of the internet, paper is obsolete, and the whole idea of a fixed broadcast slice will soon be obsolete. The MSM has great information gathering ability, and potentially a vast wealth of stored complete interviews, uncut stories, etc, just sitting on the shelf. Sometime within the next decade, we can expect to have a much more random and at-will access to relatively unedited material, strictly for technological reasons. Eventually every computer on the web will have full, random access HDTV bandwidth to whatever material the user chooses. At 10:17 PM you queue up episode 5 of Lost In Space, at 10:21 PM, I queue up the uncut interview with the global warming skeptic.

I would imagine that this would add value to much material that is currently worthless under the current paradigm, so perhaps economic forces will tend to result in a less biased MSM.

It’s all speculative, but there you go!

Nov 12, 2004 - 6:43 pm 30. dougf:

MSM DELENDA EST

Having said everything I feel about the media,I just wanted to post a message of gratitude to the troops fighting in Iraq and especially in Fallujah.I cnanot understand why the media cannot show more of what the defenders of civilization are doing in Fallujah instead of the drivel they peddle 24-7.Well I can understand why but it offends me anyways.We get a month of Abu-Gharib and a minimum of what monsters the Islamists really are.Fallujah appears to every bit the hell-hole we all thought it was and I am GRATEFUL that GWB and Ayad Allawi are man enough to finally clean up the cockroaches NO MATTER WHAT.

We are fortunate to have men of superior caliber both in politics and in our military at this critical historical moment.

My undiluted respect for every person now actively serving in the cause of freedom.

Nov 12, 2004 - 7:04 pm 31. Kevin P:

Roger;

T.V. news as a serious outlet for news is beginning a slow death spiral. It may survive in a tabloid entertainment form but Dan, Peter, and Tom will retire and their replacements will eventually become non-players as far as guiding the country in a serious fashion. I see this as positive. The democratization of outlets for info will be good because the idea that anything could be explained in 2 or 3 minute bites was a fraud even when we thought we were getting the truth.With the net people will be able to get as much news as they want with the ability to dig deep if they wish. Without 2 0r 3 networks creating phoney and incomplete “story lines” on important issues it will require more work from the public so instead of spending 7 hours a night watching insipid network re-runs they can investigate their world instead. The false notion that these self appointed news Mandarins were giving us a complete picture on the truth the last forty years was a false paradigm and now that there influence is starting to crumble they are trying to scare people into thinking that they will become more ignorant if they don’t have Danny and his clique editing the important news for them. They were just as likely to swallow a bill of goods as any first time surfer of the web and the last year has shown just how mistaken they were. They just didn’t have anybody calling them on their crap before the net came along. No doubt there will be some stumbles along the way and no information delivery system will ever be perfect but I think the potential of the web to give a better picture of the news is far greater then the old fashion give me 30 minutes and we will give you the world format.The net has flaws but the old fashion media was never as good as they thought it was.

Nov 12, 2004 - 9:10 pm 32. BeckyJ:

Of course blogs spin, but very few blogs purport to present unspun truth as does the NYT and other MSM outlets. And those blogs that do, tend to get called out. Yes, it takes effort to dig around and find out the information for yourself, but that’s the responsibility and fun of living in a democracy. We get to figure it out for ourselves and draw our own conclusions.

Samuel mentioned reading both WAPO and WATIMES. This is exactly what I tell my students to do. Find reputable sources from both ends of the spectrum and then go from there. Chances are you will give yourself a fairly balanced picture.

I agree with Roger. I think the MSM is upset and worried that it’s losing its position as the purveyor of all that’s right and true in our world. How dare we, average citizens, dig around and find out information for ourselves!

In the end, I believe it is a good thing. Maybe we’ll go back to the days of competing daily newspapers, each one with a different editorial slant (except blogs will likely take the place of dead-tree news).

Nov 13, 2004 - 12:33 pm

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